A review by robinwalter
Love Comes Home by Molly Clavering

Did not finish book. Stopped at 45%.

 

I started this book looking forward to a relaxing read, recovery from the disappointment of the underwhelming start to my Dean Street December 2023 that I experienced with Christopher Bush's "The Case of the Running Mouse". I have enjoyed most of the Molly Clavering books that I've read to date, but sadly I could not finish this one. 

 

I started this expecting a gentle comedy of errors, a mildly-paced story where nothing much happened but where the emphasis was on people and places being both nice and pleasant. By the halfway mark what I got instead was political propaganda, and characters I could not like. 

 

I loathe politics, and for my entire adult life I have gone out of my way to avoid interacting with politics to the extent humanly possible. The first half of this book however, was full of political statements expressed without subtlety and with a frequency and force that made it seem very likely the views expressed were those of the author. 

 

I try to be very careful and resist the lazy tendency to assume that a character is a mouthpiece for how the author feels, but when every "pro"tagonist expresses the same point of view repeatedly, and no counterpoint is provided by any character who is portrayed sympathetically, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that the author was expressing her own political convictions. At least in the half of the book that I got through those convictions boil down to, "most of the aristocracy/landed gentry work much harder than the proletariat, and do so out of pure altruism, the peons should love us and be grateful”. This is a perspective I cannot share and one that I ultimately could not put up with having repeatedly expressed as a significant part of the story.  A few examples to illustrate:

Though the village was strongly Socialist in its politics—Communist, some of the stauncher die-hard Conservatives said darkly—the Cranstouns were well known and respected in a dour unyielding way. Jane sometimes felt that she did not altogether blame them for their socialist sympathies. (e.a.)

Of course they were unjust, these angry, hungry Socialists, where men like Sir Magnus, and women like his wife were concerned, men and women who worked far longer than Union hours for the good of their employees and poorer neighbours, on the County Council, on education boards, and committees without number. Nor had the Socialists any real idea of a landowner’s difficulties, the crippling death-duties, the constant expense of an estate that must always in these times of progress be a liability, the appearances that had to be kept up for the sake of morale if for nothing else.

 

 

It’s a thousand pities they can’t be made to see that the Conservatives are far more progressive than their own party, and that at bottom the aims of both aren’t so entirely different after all.”
It seemed to Gilbert that they were poles apart in outlook if not in actual policy, for the Conservatives still had the good old-fashioned idea of all for the people and nothing by the people

At this point,  I should add in the interest of being "fair and balanced"  that I’ve often dropped books where the author used characters as mouthpieces for political propaganda/proselytising on the other end of the political spectrum too. 

Prior to beginning this book, I had a slight preference for Molly Clavering's stories  over those of her more famous neighbour,  D.E.Stevenson because of my discomfort with some of the views expressed (and seemingly endorsed) in Ms Stevenson's books. Her cousin,  Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote extensively about his experiences in and affection for Samoa. Despite being  very much a product of his time and upbringing, the indications are that the sincerity of his affection for the place has never been doubted in Samoa, where he is still held in high esteem. Ms Stevenson on the other hand often had her "positive" characters express points of view that I found disturbingly xenophobic, albeit very much the norm for people of her era and background. It is not hard in her books to find passages redolent with the paternalistic patronising misogyny and imperialist racism for which "Britannia" is (in)famous. Before starting this book my experience with Ms. Clavering's works had been very different. 

 

It was disappointing to me to read Ms. Clavering express views of this sort and more importantly, make them central to the story as she did.

 

Since I read fiction for enjoyment and since the persistent political propaganda in the first half of this book robbed me of any, the sensible thing to do was to abandon it. That decision was made easier by the fact that quite apart from the political worldview expressed repeatedly by the "heroine", the book was very short on likeable characters. The setup for the romantic plot was bizarre, especially  in terms of how the heroine justified it to herself. She came across as extremely passive-aggressive and whiny, while her younger sister was just a brat. I ploughed on through the "Tories are terrific" electioneering all the way to almost halfway,  hoping to see some signs that these two central characters might become likeable, but when they did not, I fell back on the mantra that guides my reading choices – "life is too short". I am sure that there are many who will love this book, but I will abandon "Love" and cling to hope  – the hope that the next Clavering I read is one I can finish.